The politics of judicial independence: Explaining the trajectories of judicial councils in Italy and Turkey

This thesis presents a comparative historical analysis of the trajectories of judicial councils in Italy and Turkey from their inception at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. Through a detailed analysis of relevant literature, laws and documents as well as complementary semi-structured in-depth interviews, it demonstrates that professional career courses of judges and prosecutors, which are by and large administered by judicial councils, play a central role in explaining judicial independence or lack thereof. Thus, reading in tandem developments at the macro level with career courses of individual judges and prosecutors, this thesis delves into a relatively unexplored area of political inquiry; that is the relations between different levels within the judiciary. It is specifically argued that the vertical, hierarchical setting of Turkish judiciary that stems from the nature of relations between higher and lower ranks of the judiciary as well as between judicial councils and individual judges and prosecutors renders it prone to takeovers by external actors in short time spans as seen recurrently after 2010, as opposed to the horizontal and decentralized structure of Italian judiciary.